Courses and Education

BOOS is delighted to announce the launch of the BOOS Mentorship Programme. This is the first of the surgical specialty societies to launch such a programme and has the full support of the Society.

The programme would be for junior consultants / senior trainees in their first five years of starting out and would provide small group work with more senior surgeons to allow them to grow and develop, discuss difficult cases, decision making and perhaps most importantly surgical technique to make life easier, safer and more effective. Much as we would like to think we have a fair degree of knowledge when starting out this is probably less than 50% of the experience of our seniors and perhaps more than any other specialty, orthopaedic oncology is an apprenticeship.

The idea would be to meet 6 times a year – probably at about 6pm on a Monday evening in a decent pub. We would spend two hours discussing cases and then have a dinner and drinks to make it less arduous. The group would be small, perhaps limited to 5 or 6 and would be in a spirit of encouragement and growth. Eventually this would be a rolling programme so as those came off the top, newer consultants would join at the bottom.

We would rotate through the senior surgeons around the country. This would mean that each mentor would only have to run a session perhaps once every 2 years.

The first session is on Monday 5th September with Professor Grimer in Birmingham. So that we can gauge numbers please can you let tomcosker@hotmail.com know if you plan to attend?